Book bits: 2014 schedule fills out

Amazon has added a load of new listings for Star Trek novels and ebooks, revealing all sorts of new information about the 2014 prose line-up.

That includes confirmation that Jeffrey Lang will be returning to the world of Star Trek, with a new TNG novel, Light Fantastic - This is the Data and Lal focused follow-up to Cold Equations, David Mack recently revealed is in the works. Amazon suggest this will be out of at the end of June, and also provide this most exciting blurb:

The continuation of the epic story begun in the New York Times bestselling Next Generation trilogy COLD EQUATIONS. A now-resurrected Data and his android "daughter" Lal must face off against the holographic entity James Moriarity, who is determined to acquire android bodies in order to live a "real-world" immortal life.

They have also revealed some details about Scott Pearson's forthcoming ebook novella. It will be a TOS story, called The More Things Change, and will be out in early July.

Also now listed are the first two books in the new Vanguard spin-off series, Seekers. These have gained titles now. David Mack's first book in the series is now called Second Nature, while Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore's book two is Point of Divergence.

You might recall when Seekers was announced, the authors planned to have the books be titled purely by number, ie Seekers 1 and Seekers 2. Alas the publishers shot down this retro idea, as David Mack explained on his blog:

Long story short, we were overruled on this by the publisher. I’ll spare you the book-industry technobabble, but the simple explanation is that we were told the automated, meta-tagged, keyword-driven sales system that connects publishers, wholesalers, and retailers, would have suffered some kind of cyber-seizure if we had denied it titles. So, the books will now have titles. Win some, lose some.

Dayton Ward also noted on his blog, that despite the Amazon listing identifying these as TOS books, they wont be released under that banner.

With these latest additions, the 2014 schedule for novels so far goes like this:

• February - Voyager: Protectors, by Kirsten Beyer.
• March - TOS: No Time Like the Past, by Greg Cox.
• April - Enterprise: Rise of the Federation: Tower of Babel, by Christopher L. Bennett.
• May - TOS: Serpents in the Garden, by Jeff Mariotte.
• June - The Lost Era: One Constant Star, by David R. George III.
• July - TNG: Light Fantastic, by Jeffrey Lang.
• August - Seekers: Second Nature, by David Mack.
• September - Seekers: Point of Divergence, by Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore.
• December(ish) - TNG: Home Again, by Una McCormack.
• December(ish) - Section 31: Disavowed, by David Mack.

With them joined by an increasingly regular line of ebook novellas:

• February - Titan: Absent Enemies, by John Jackson Miller.
• April - TOS: Seasons of Light and Darkness, by Michael A. Martin.
• July - TOS: The More Things Change, by Scott Pearson. 
• October - TOS: Shadow of the Machine, by Scott Harrison.
• Unknown - DS9 story, by Paula M. Block and Terry J. Erdmann. 

For as much as there is to know about each of these titles, hit the prose button on my 2014 schedule page, where you'll find links to all my previous coverage.

Meanwhile in the present, Literary Treks' latest podcast includes an interview with Una McCormack, in which they dissect her latest work of Trek, The Crimson Shadow, the second book in The Fall series. It's a fascinating (and spoiler filled) discussion, delving into politics, religion, sociology and history. For instance, McCormack identified her real world influences in developing post-war Cardassia:

...it was that combination of reflecting on post-war Europe, and reflecting on what's currently happening, particularly in places like Greece, and thinking, well let's think what these pressures are, let's think them through; and what kind of solutions people might try, somebody like Garak might try, to prevent Cardassia going nationalist again.

Listen in to Literary Treks for much more. But make sure to read The Crimson Shadow first; they don't actually give away the biggest spoilers, but you wont have a clue what they're talking about! Plus it's a brilliant novel, so if you haven't read it, you must!